A Breath Apart
by infinitely-climbing
Summary: Perhaps in another world, they could have had their happy ending, but alas, in this one, they are always just a breath apart. AU.


**This is my first Fanfic, and I will warn you: I love angst. I would also love to know if this is a terrible story or not (or, you know, if anyone is even reading it).**

* * *

Letting go of him is harder than it should be.

She pries his frozen fingers off of her wrist and watches him sink, the look of peace never fading from his beautiful face. He sinks like the _Titanic_, into the dark ocean, floating down into the cold depths. Before she can change her mind, she takes a deep breath and begins to swim until she reaches the whistle and blows until she thinks her lungs will burst, thinking only of her promise to him.

The boat comes back, and they haul her aboard. As the boat rows away, she hugs the blanket tighter against herself and pretends that it is his arms that are encircling her.

She convinces herself not to look back.

* * *

When he wakes up, she's gone. The door she had been resting on is still floating on the water; the scene is seemingly unchanged other than the absence of the beautiful woman with the flaming red hair. There's a lifeboat in the distance, but it's out of earshot and rowing away. He tries to see if she is on the boat, but it is impossible to make out any of the people and he figures he's a dead man anyway.

But that doesn't stop him from clambering onto the abandoned door. It doesn't stop him from making an attempt to live, just in case she has. He passes out once again once he is on.

In the end, his attempt saves him. The next time he wakes up, he is in the sterile room of a hospital, surrounded by nurses, instead of in the ocean, surrounded by those who didn't make it.

* * *

She stares at the Statue of Liberty. Rain is pouring down, drenching everything. She is thankful for it, for when the sky's tears drip down her cheeks, it is impossible to tell if her own are as well.

It feels wrong to be here without him, staring at a symbol of freedom when she's sure that the cause of hers is a shooting star rising up to Heaven.

The steward timidly approaches her and asks for a name. At first, she blurts out the first name that comes to mind. His last name rolls off her tongue so easily that it could be hers, and for a second, she has a fantasy that it is; that she is his and nothing can tear them apart. That they officially are together forever, 'til death do them apart.

It takes her a second to remember that he is gone, and that isn't her real name.

She turns to look at the steward, carefully keeping herself composed. She has every intention of correcting herself and apologizing.

But when she opens her mouth, she can't. She can't go back to the life she had before, can't release the few things left she has of him. She can't let go.

She ends up blurting out what her name would have been had her fantasies come true, and somehow, it feels more right than any other name she has ever been called has been.

* * *

They give him a survivor list, and he tears through it. He will later try to find his friends, and be met with bitter disappointment, but right now, he only searches for the one name that truly matters to him right now.

He looks through it once. Twice. Thrice. After a few hours of fruitless searching, he accepts the truth: she is gone. He spots a name that he thinks might be hers, but only the first name is—the last name is his. He stares at it for a moment before allowing a solitary tear to trail down his face. He almost laughs afterwards at the irony of it—it would have been her name, had the ship not sunk. He wants to burn the list, burn all of the names on it that are not her, and destroy the one that could have been given one more hour, day, month, year.

It doesn't seem fair. He has had all of his life to be free of the constraints of upper-class society, to be happy. She had less than a day.

He had had only a few hours to love her before she was ripped from him.

* * *

She never checks the survivor list. Never skims through, keeping her eyes out for the names of her mother, her ex-fiancé, her elitist acquaintances. The only name that would have mattered to her is not on the list, she is sure.

She does all of the things they dreamed of doing together: she rides a horse with one leg on each side, learns to fly, rides a rollercoaster, and drinks cheap beer. She lives in Santa Monica and becomes an actress.

She eventually meets a man and agrees to go out for dinner with him. He has curly dark hair and dark eyes, and looks nothing like the memory of her savior, her love, her redemption, but reminds her of a promise made long ago.

* * *

He eventually asks her to marry him, and she agrees. He loves her, she knows, with all of his heart. Her fiancé kisses her and murmurs proclamations of his love in her ear, and it takes all of her strength not to cry when the only face she can see when he touches her is that of a man with blond hair and blue eyes, a face that haunts her both in her dreams and when she is awake.

She does not love her fiancé, but with the memory of the other man comes the memory of a promise she had once made long ago, so she pretends that this is what she wants.

At her wedding, she cries as she walks down the aisle and tries not to as her new husband draws her towards the bed that night. Everyone assumes that they are tears of happiness.

It is now, more than ever, that she thinks of what could have been.

* * *

He marries a French girl. She is polite and quiet, and acts nothing like the woman who would not bend to anyone's will. He doesn't love her, but she loves him.

At the wedding, his bride walks down the aisle with a smile on her face. He smiles, too, but it isn't genuine. He whispers in her ear about how she looks beautiful today and she looks even happier. She never once realizes that the words are not quite meant for her. When it is over, he gives her a chaste kiss, unable to give her any more.

At the reception, he makes a speech about how when he had first seen her, he couldn't look away. That she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. That he'd fallen in love immediately. That he'd thought that to get a girl like her, he'd have to have angels fly out of his arse. She cries during the speech and embraces him when it's over, never once suspecting that he does not speak of her.

She does not know that his nightmares are not quite of the grand ship sinking and of his drowning, that he is lying every night when he wakes up, covered in sweat, and tells her that he dreams of his own watery death. She does not know that he wakes in the night, screaming, not for himself, but for a beautiful woman with red hair and green eyes who could not be contained by anything, save for a tragic ship, an iceberg, and the unforgiving sea.

He kisses his bride and imagines that he is kissing another set of lips, and wishes for a thousand dreams that could never come true.

* * *

Ten years after the sinking, there is a memorial for the ghost ship and those who perished. People light candles and cry and bow their heads. There is a stack of paraphernalia of the survivors and the relatives and friends, illuminated by the candles. It is a beautiful night, clear and starry, and she wonders how it could be so when their moods are so bleak.

Amongst the trinkets and items that hold meaning for the givers but not anyone else, she places her final gifts to him. The sketchbook is laid down first, away from the candles that could potentially burn it. The charcoal pencils are next. Then, she is turning away, trying to hide the tears that burn behind her eyelids, and the memory of a song, a ship, and a man that saved her.

She makes her way to her husband. She thinks she sees the flash of blond hair, the sparkle of blue eyes, but she does not bother checking. He is gone, she tells herself, and there's no use making sure that it isn't him when she already knows that she will only get her heart broken again, and clasps her husband's hand.

Resolved, she does not turn to make sure. The only feeling she allows herself to torture herself with for a brief second is that of hands around her waist, the wind through her hair during the sunset, and flying.

* * *

He goes to the memorial.

His wife does not want him to go, but he insists without telling her why. She relents, but decides to stay home, and he makes his way by himself.

He makes his way over to the haphazard pile of gifts that the dead would enjoy. He places the only thing he could find that she would like on the pile. It is a record, with a cheery song about a flying machine (going up she goes, up she goes), and a girl named Josephine. There is a sketchbook and some pencils that almost make his heart break. He has not drawn anything other than a certain necklace, red ringlets, and the face that changed his world for ten years. His wife does not know that he is an artist at heart.

He walks away with his hands stuffed in his pockets, trying not to look at anyone directly, but a flash of red catches his eye. It is a woman with porcelain skin and red hair, and he cannot help reaching for her for a split second. He cannot see her face, and there are probably a million women in the world with red ringlets and pale skin, but he can only think that maybe it is her.

Then she clasps hands with a man next to her, a man with dark hair and all the love in the world in his eyes, and he is shaken back into the real world.

He remembers then that she is gone. Stupid, he thinks to himself. It is no use getting his hopes up only to hear reality crash around him and to taste the bitterness of loss.

He does not bother to look again and make sure. It is no use confirming what he already knows. Angrily, he spits at the ground, and is chagrined that even in that action, he cannot forget.

* * *

She has a son named for him and a kind shipbuilder that gave his life to try and save others. He will eventually grow to become a ball of energy, racing around the house with complete disregard for rules, and as he grows even older, he will become an artist, drawing portraits of those he deems worth drawing. She could almost pretend that he is not her husband's child, but his, save for the dark curls.

When she names him, her husband asks why the first name. He understands that the middle name belongs to the man who gave her his life jacket as the unsinkable ship sank, but has never heard the story of the other man who saved her in every way she could be saved.

She does not want to tell him, and so she quietly replies that she simply likes the name. He does not question it.

Her son becomes a part of the Air Force and learns to fly an airplane, and draws the soldiers he meets there. He points out one man that he has drawn over and over again. The man is missing an arm, but her son is not deterred. The man has a wonderfully determined look in his eyes, he says.

She smiles and says that they are lovely, and dreams of the angel who drew a one-legged prostitute's hands because he thought they were beautiful.

* * *

His wife dies in childbirth, and he is left with their daughters. They both look exactly like him, with blond hair and blue eyes, and he can almost pretend that their mother was not reserved and quiet, but rather rebellious and brave and beautiful.

He names one of them after a little girl from Third Class who danced with him, and her middle name is the name of the Norwegian girl his best friend from Italy fell in love with aboard the _Titanic_. He names the other first after a lovely flower with both thorns and beauty that he cannot bear to even look at, and her middle name is in the song he sang to the woman he could only love for a few hours before fate tore them apart.

The former becomes a writer, telling stories about everything but the ocean and those who traverse it. He never asks why she avoids the topic. In a way, he is thankful that she does not like the sea. It has taken enough from him already, and losing his daughter to tales of it would only be another.

The latter becomes a dancer. She leaps across the New York City stages, and he cannot help but both love and hate it. It warms his heart to see his little girl so happy, so free—but it never ceases to bring forth memories of another girl, one who danced with him at a party even though she wasn't supposed to, one who trusted him enough to climb on the railing of a ship and pretend she was flying.

His daughters do not heal the hurt in his heart, but it is easier to hide his grief when they are there.

* * *

Her husband dies of Alzheimer's when they are in their eighties. Her son marries and has a little girl, and when her son and his wife are killed in a car accident, she takes the girl in and cares for her until she is eighteen. Then, her granddaughter cares for her, and they live together. Their lives are peaceful.

The hurt has gotten easier to bear over the years, and though it never diminishes, she can think of him now without crying. She is no longer seventeen, but nearly one hundred and one. She has never told his story to anyone. No one suspects the broken heart behind the kind smile she wears.

Then, when the TV is turned on one day, she sees the drawing. It is of a woman, naked, wearing only a necklace that was cold and heavy and symbolized only imprisonment. It is of a woman that she used to see when she looked in the mirror.

She calls the man who discovered the drawing when she realizes that she is ready to go back to the memories buried inside the deep ocean of secrets that is her heart.

* * *

He is in his nineties when he dies in his sleep. He was not sick, they say. He simply passes because of old age, and maybe he is laughing at the irony that he is the one who dies peacefully in bed, wherever he is.

His wife tries to hang on, tries to be reassured by her friends that he died a happy man, in bed with her. She cannot bear the heartbreak, though, and dies a mere week later, not knowing that her friends are wrong; she dies never knowing that she married a stranger who could love only a woman he could never have.

Only he could have known that as he died, images flashed across his mind: bright red curls, a door floating in the ocean, a car, a shooting star, a drawing. He dies wondering why life is so cruel as to always leave him wondering what could have been.

He never finds out that she is alive.

* * *

His daughters discover his old sketches, post-_Titanic_, of the same woman and necklace, over and over again. They puzzle over who she is. The drawings are dated from before he ever met their mother, and do not end until shortly before his death.

Is she a lover? A relative? They wonder for days, but cannot figure it out.

Ten years pass before an answer comes. Both are in different cities—one is in the Big Apple, continuing to dance, while the other is in Chippewa Falls, trying to trace their genealogy as inspiration for her next book. Both are shocked when another picture of the woman shows up on the TV screen and the picture is signed with their father's initials. They try to call, but the line is busy and they decide to try again in a few days, not knowing that there was only one call waiting.

They hear about _Titanic_ and their father and a woman one of them shares a name with a few days later, and wonder what other secrets their father had kept.

* * *

She tells the man her story, and when she is finished, she sees her granddaughter's tear-stricken face, the apologetic look in his assistant's eyes as he tells her that the love of her life was never even documented as a passenger of the ship, the conflicted look in the explorer's face as he realizes that there is far more to the dead ship than he had thought.

Later that night, while her granddaughter and the explorer are conversing quietly about the ship of dreams, she walks to the back of the boat and climbs on the railing. She pulls out the necklace from her pocket. She has kept it all these years as a reminder of everything that has happened, but it doesn't really belong to her. It belongs in_ le __coeur de l'océan_, with the souls of the dead. She throws it into the darkness, and watches it sink to the bottom.

* * *

When she goes to bed that night, she wonders if maybe this night, it will be different.

* * *

She is in a wedding dress, on the unsinkable ship. The stewards open up the doors to the grand straircase for her, and everyone is smiling and cheering. The little girl he danced with waves at her, and the kindly shipbuilder smiles fondly, but her eyes are on the man at the top of the stairs. His back is to her, but she would know whom he is anywhere. She smiles widely, lovingly, and climbs up the stairs to reach him.

He turns and gives her the most beautiful smile she has ever seen, before taking her into his arms and kissing her. After that, everything explodes into light and colors, and nothing else exists except for them, together forever.

* * *

She wakes to another day with a heavy heart.

Even though she dreams that same dream every night, she always hopes that this time, it is real.

* * *

The letter that his daughters send her about him gets lost in the mail.

* * *

She dies a few months later, peacefully in her sleep. It's just like he said she would, and maybe somewhere, she is smiling at the thought that she kept her promise to him.

When she dies, she does not see like he did. Instead, she feels the rush of the wind as she stands on the bow of a ship, the brush of soft lips over her own, all the love in the world thrumming through her heart.

She dies wondering if perhaps she will meet him just as she does every night—on the ship of dreams, walking up the staircase, more sure of him than anything else.

She dies without ever knowing that he survived the _Titanic_, that they could have had it all.

* * *

After that, the only things left of them are a story, some old belongings, and a piece of jewelry in the heart of the ocean. And—

A lack of closure, of catharsis. Of ever knowing if they will meet again, and be able to have the happy ending of which they had been deprived. Or…

Or if maybe they are fated to be this way: lost without one another, and yet still thrown apart; kept a universe apart, years apart, infinitely apart, and at the same time, only a breath away, a heartbeat away, a few seconds away—a mirror between them, never yielding what lies on the other side, only reflecting back the face that the other longs so badly to see, but cannot.

* * *

_Fin._


End file.
